UncleSon said:
Michael Moore is very popular in Europe right now, and I have an admittedly unscientific and emotional feeling why that is: He's fat, uncouth, poorly dressed, and a loudmouth -- in other words, he's the perfect stereotype of how contemporary Europeans want to see Americans these days, the Super-sized idiot from across the pond, who has but one redeeming feature: He hates Bush.
Errr No. As far as the British are concerned and I speak for each and everyone of them, we don’t tend to judge people by their appearances. If we had a craving for
fat uncouth, poorly dressed, {insert own ad hominem here} American loudmouths we would have many more of them in our media.
Has it ever entered your head that perhaps it is the content that Moore comes up with that we like and his popularity is nothing to do with physical appearance. In fact if you look at the people who grace our T.V’s and films I would say that would be far more accurate to say that despite his appearances he is popular. And you need to think why that might be so that rather than try to attack him you attack his message, if that is what you want to do.
The reason we like Moore is that he takes a cynical, satirical and humorous look at authority, This appeals to us Brits. We want to be amused. We want someone telling us what we ‘know ‘ (that all politicians and people in power are crooks). We have had a lot of it here. We have had comedians (Ben Elton), TV Programmes (Spitting Image) and magazines (Private Eye) all telling us about the corruption and personal interests infecting politics. We have has the tabloid exposes of philandering MPs, and we like that because we then know where we are with politicians and government. We are one up on them, we know that they are all power crazed liars.
With America it is different. We don’t get the same criticisms of American politics and politicians. Yet with America starting to dictate to the world it is becoming the new world government and we need to know where we are with them what drives them. We need to know that American politicians are as corrupt as our own.
Moore tells us. While they give the impression of being altruistic superheros, he tells us that those in authority in America are just like those here. And he uses a powerful weapon in telling us Irony. Irony is something we are told Americans don’t understand, it is something that we in Britain love. Moore has a very British sense of humour, and he entertains us.(We see a lot of the criticisms of Moore as criticisms of Irony, and in turn see that as criticisms of ourselves.
We get the backlash against Moore reported and we don’t understand it. What are those critics saying ‘That there is no corruption in America ?’ ‘That no innocent person has ever been killed by a legally held weapon in America ?’ Moore tells us some of the truth. Not all the truth but some of it is true. That is how irony works. You don’t get the full picture, just enough to amuse?
Just because you don’t like the message there is no need to try to suppress it. We hear the message and move on, it is only telling us what we already know. There is no point having a go at Moore, when there is a clear market for his message and his style. Moore as an individual is not a news story here. There is no point slagging him off. If you dislike Moore (or more specifically, his message) then you need to tell us what your message is, What point of view are you trying to get across, but when you tell us try to be funny, entertain us or we won’t listen.
